An open mind helps when it comes to navigating lists — especially because it’s a year end and a decade end, which means a blizzard of albums with numbers next to them. In some ways this could be viewed as annoying, sure, but lists also leave a point-form archive of what folks listened to for the past 12 months and past 10 years, respectively. It’s point-form history. It’s interesting. Even when you don’t agree. With that in mind, EW trots out a few surprises: We have a new No. 1 and a couple few albums we haven’t seen anywhere else. You are free to scratch your head.
10 Cat Power – You Are Free (2003)
09 Justin Timberlake – FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006)
08 Beyoncé – I Am… Sasha Fierce (2008)
07 The Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)
06 The Dixie Chicks – Home (2002)
05 Bob Dylan – Love And Theft (2001)
04 OutKast – Stankonia (2000)
03 Radiohead – Kid A (2000)
02 Jay-Z – The Blueprint (2001)
01 Kanye West – The College Dropout (2004)
You’ll find the accompanying rationales at EW (“Funerals are generally somber affairs, but the Canadian indie rockers’ emotionally charged debut mostly just made us smile.”). The mag’s Best Of The Decade issue hits newsstands today.
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Glad to see some love for You Are Free. It’s an incredible album.
YEAH. RS gave some love to The Greatest, but You Are Free is so much better.
No one wants to hear it right now, but Kanye West is the artist of the decade. It needs to be said.
no it doesn’t.
yes it does.
no, no my good man, i assure you.
My friend, no one altered the popular music landscape, transcended genre or dominated discourse more than Mr. West. And his albums are fucking good. (3/4 at least).
Interesting point. I agree that his albums are good and that he dominated discourse – but I don’t really see how he transcended genre more than anyone else (certainly Outkast has him beat there) or altered the popular music landscape: after all sped-up samples from old soul records had been present in hip hop for awhile – and wasn’t “Ms Fat Booty” like a huge hit? To me, he was like the “Kurt Cobain” of the decade — the guy who popularized stuff that had been around for awhile.
Actually the soul samples weren’t very big at all before ‘Ye made “H to the Izzo” for Jay-Z in 2001. And besides, he has largely abandoned that sound since The College Dropout. Late Registration was orchestral, breaking ground by tapping the aforementioned Jon Brion; Graduation was electronic, with “Stronger”‘s success making way for the zillion electro and house xeroxes we hear on the radio today; and 808s was post-electronic. There’s a big hit song on Top 40 radio today by a young rapper who samples IMOGEN HEAP. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBI3lc18k8Q ) Like it or not, we’re living in a post-Kanye world.
i do beleive ive heard the sped up sample. ehhm, rza ehhm. wu the shit and ya ye the artist of the decade but lets not forget the essence.
one word gangsta. Tearz
Funny enough, said song reached #1 on Billboard.
Jon Brion
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, b!tchtits.
Second the Kanye comment. Dude won the decade. And not by a small margin.
Thank you for declairing a champ. I now have some terrific dinner table fodder to last me through the end of this month.
Charlie Wilson was the winner of the 80′s. I’m serious, tell your cat right now.
imma let you finish…
Someone needs to hear this… Kanye is pop culture top producer. J Dilla (Jay Dee) is the top hip/hop producer of this decade. Many in the Hip/Hop community would agree with that. His soul samples curated thousands of imitators. No one could match the original though.
RIP Jay Dee
RIP Baatin
Slum Village Fantastic Vol. II, Jaylib Champion Sound, J Dilla Donuts, and Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. II, oh yeah Madvillain Madvillainy
Except Hip Hop is the most unoriginal music of all time. It is just ripped off samples with mumbling over the music. Imma let you finish.
i agree! i think he’s 4/4
youre absolutely right man, couldnt have said it better myself…
Your a FAG!
I can dig it.
I’m kind of surprised Kanye West comments on Stereogum.
That list is actually surpisingly half decent. At least for Entertainment Weekly.
What I like about this list is that it tries to represents what was popular. Not some silly list with a bunch of indie bands most people haven’t heard of.
And Kanye is the Champion of the Aughts and he knows it. Suck it.
If I had to pick on group or musician that changed or influence the business than anyone else in the 2000, it would be Radiohead not Kanye.
Good call on the Cat Power, actually. I might not have put it there, but it’s definitely an excellent album. Where you’d put it on a list depends on your perspective, I suppose.
Same with Arcade Fire.
I can gaurantee if you ask Kanye West (not that he hasn’t been important) who the most important artist of the decade was he will answer Radiohead.
radiohead hands down. kanye is overrated. a singles artist at best. i agree witht the guy comparing him to kurt cobain
Singles artist? Really?
Some of his least-good songs are his singles, and many of his best tracks are not, so I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
Maybe producer of the decade but he’s FAR from an “artist.”To anyone who actually listens to hip-hop (real hip-hop don’t rock neon, though I like Lupe’s first record) his lyrics are laughable and corny. I’d say Outkast or Radiohead……
I just threw up in my mouth. I wish i had read first it was EW doing the list because i could have braced myself for such a stupid dumbass “let’s put craptastic shit like Kanye West and Justin Timberlake on our list to look edgy” horse crap. wow.
yeah it’s pretty easy to miss, only the title of the article
08 Beyoncé – I Am… Sasha Fierce (2008)
…Excuse me while I go bang my head against the nearest wall.
Yeah really? I mean it wasn’t even her best album (not even close) much less the top ten of the decade.
beyonce’s album title alone deserves being on the list for pure irony itself. who does that betccch think she izzzzz? IIIIIIIIII am Sasha Fierce.
EW originally gave I am Sasha Fierce a B+ when it came out. Go figure. Rationale please?
This isn’t good for Kanye’s ego. EW should reconsider.
Where the hell is the Strokes?????
Agreed, there is no love for The Strokes on the list. Glad to see Cat Power, though.
Here are just some of the albums that kayne, beyonce, justin timberlake beat for the BEST albums of the 2000′s
- Wilco ” Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”
- The Strokes ” Is this it”
- Bon Iver ” For emma, forever ago”
- Broken Social Scene ” You forgot it in people”
- The microphones ” The glow pt.2″
I can go all day with this but you get the point….
wilco was nothing without nels cline, NOTHING… lol
I am still laughing.
3 hip hop/rap albums in the top five. Haha. Nobody’s list in the 90s had 3 hip hop albums in the top five and certainly that was a FAR FAR better decade in terms of hip hop. Other than that, this list is a joke.
KAYNE WAS THE VOICE OF MY GENERATION AND STILL IS.
“KAYNE WAS THE VOICE OF MY GENERATION AND STILL IS.”
I love that you spelled his name wrong, thank you.
i can vouch for that, dude. he’s an asshole, and now look at us. we’re all assholes too. thanks kanye for voicing your narcissism in the commercialized hip hop radio world of the Big Four (aka Big Brother.)
Im surprised Cat Power, album is damn good but you just dont hear her name that much. And props to Arcade Fire as well. Jay Z or Radiohead should be at number one though…reasons being that their albums are infinitely better and Kanye West is a dumbass.
Not a terrible list, compared to some others I’ve seen. Though, Cat Power does seem like the token “obscure” record when there are hundreds of better choices they could have gone with.
I guess everyone forgets that the College Dropout was before Kanye was KANYE. Good Album.
MPP
You took the words right outta my mouth, right down to the deal with the Imogen Heap sample. When I first heard that song on the radio, I immediately thought, “Somehow, Kanye has to be the culprit behind this.”
For deal though, I’ve always found Ye to the hip hop equivalent to Kurt Cobain.
Dam my nigga Game get somelove for The Documentary amazing album.!!!come on man he is so underrated and what about Raw Footage from Ice Cube dam.this list sucks sorry to say..
Kanyes good but Blackalicious “Blazing Arrow” needs to be reconized cause that shit is great.
If you never heard it before, please do its really good
The fact that that Nilsson track when un-hip hop sampled until then is kind of surprising. They should have done that whole album.
I’m glad someone else feels this way. I hate how they talk about this amazing hip-hop and how there’s nothing better when someone like Brother Ali makes even liking Lil’ Wayne laughable.
I’m delighted to see ‘Love & Theft’ get its due recognition.
who the fuck is kanye west? seriously! i’m going to listen to Thee Oh Sees and continue to not give a flying fuck about the rest of the world.
I hope this is a Troll thread…sincerely.
Not horrible. Cat Power thrown in for shock factor I suppose, but Sasha Fierce was bad. Does anybody know if that Dixie Chicks album is worth anything at all?
The 00′s end at the end of 2010, not 2009. The best of the decade lists are all supposed to be done at the end of next year.
Why is everyone making this mistake?
@Kurt C.
They can do math?
my thoughts exactly LMAO
Radiohead? Kanye?
Well you could have both at once: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iATyUqGlYE ;-)
F**king indie heads. Think there so hip with their music thats supposedly artistic.
F**king pop listeners. Thinkin the noise on the radio is actually music.
Both Groups have major F**king flaws so stop B.S.ing…
Kanye is artistic.
Radiohead has better albums.
Kanye is the artist of the decade though.
Where are The White Stripes?
Jay-Z and Kanye ahead of Radiohead? I don’t think so.
“Actually the soul samples weren’t very big at all before ‘Ye made “H to the Izzo” for Jay-Z in 2001.”
I think Internet Gangsta wins for the most ignorant comment regarding hip-hop in the 2000′s. Or maybe since…the 70′s when it was just getting started? I think what you meant to say was…”soul samples were not used in 45-mode so incessantly until Kanye.” How this actually caught on is beyond me. I suppose some people really do like hearing a good soul tune turned into a helium-induced mess. Sure, he blew up and everybody knows his name. Is it more because of the music he makes or what he says and does apart from the music? I know Kanye more for his controversial comments and actions than for his musicianship. He surely has done little to change the face of hip-hop in my book, even more a stretch to consider music in general. And like others have said, I would give more credit to Outkast if that were the argument.
kanye can barely rap. his biggest songs are popular because of their hooks which are sampled from other artists (jesus walks, stronger, gold digger). kanye’s greatest talent is marketing.
first of all indie rock won the decade.
that shit was everywhere, from j crew to hot topic.. but “indie” as a unifying genre means nothing more than ‘blog generated hype’. (In some cases this pays off: animal collective, arcade fire, sometimes not: tapes n tapes, girls.. etc.. ) The problem with this formula is it often cycles through artists that are approved by taste makers at an alarming rate, never allowing for BIG artists.
BIG artists belong to pop..
outkast ( who bit at indie rock cross-over with ‘hey ya’ ) dominated early on in the aughts, but either fell off – or stopped making music… there was no bigger single artist of the decade than kanye.
sorry.
but he is an engaging, hugely flawed, talented musician, performer and finally celebrity.
i guarantee more radiohead fans also listen to kanye, than kanye fans who also listen to radiohead. – love the ‘head, but c’mon a bunch of pasty brits living in castles and writing about the psychic breakdown of the 21st century — while very interesting, does whittle that demographic down to more of a typical college rock audience.
kanye wins. he’s more like steven spielberg than kurt cobain.
agreed.
and christ. to say kanye didn’t alter the rap game, now that is ignorant. he was like the tupac of the suburbs.
watch the next wave of insecure rappers singing about headspace and wounded ego and tell me that aint ‘ye.
also! do you guys remember the state of the rap game at the turn of the century?? it was all preachy daily affirmations put to some backwards-looking zulu nation type production. ( don’t get me wrong, love mos, but eff common and yeah blazing arrow sounded nice, but the mc was hooorrribblle.) kanye already changed all that with the backpack bling angle..
just saying is all.
Zulu nation? In some circles, but those are the same artists that didn’t dominate the radio, and wouldn’t make an EW list. Late 90′s was dominated by Tupac, Biggie (both dead), DMX, Eminem, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Cash Money (Juvenile, Wayne, etc.), Puff Daddy, BustaRyhmes. So Zulu boom bappish De La, Common, et al. never received the commercial success. Then again, maybe you meant ’91-96, at which point, you’re still not really correct.
Kanye? May as well be Britney Spears, Madonna, Justin Timberlake, etc. who were/are wildly popular and in the news constantly.
Kanye surfaced in 2003/04 years after Britney. If we go this route I’d call Britney spears the artist of the decade.
As for Kanye changing the ‘game.’ Yes and no. I’d say if anything there was a splintering of styles, the emergence of southern rap (with it’s incessant hi-hats), decent of NY and Westcoast Styled rap, ascendance of Neptunes minimalism, Timbaland off-kilter synchopation, and cheap casio beats generally. So impact? Yes every other song on the radio is a Kanye produced song, but think back, Timbaland was the now producer the last several years. I guess artist equivalent to how much publicity you’ve received around the time that the lists are made.
The Outkast over Kanye argument is stupid and pretentious. What have they done to change anything? They’ve made some great music, but outside of 3 or 4 the big singles most of their albums this decade have been largely hit or miss and isolated by their own peculiarities. No one follows their lead and they’ve been too off again / on again to have any kind of broad influence. When Stankonia shows up on these lists there’s a clear sense of people who aren’t really attached to hip-hop sitting back and saying “Say, aren’t those two guys interesting?”
I should say that Outkast helped define and legitimize the genius of southern hip-hop. So no disrespect to them.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
agreed, should be on any list
I find it a crazy notion to be able to compile all the albums made from 2000 until recently, into a list of 10.
should at least be 25 or 50.
i have no comment about kanye and his musical range because of the lashing of replies i will get to this. I can just say i’m not a fan of his music.
FutureSex/LoveSounds is superior to Is This It. Except not.
The Sasha Fierce record sticks out like a sore thumb. Personally, I would include The Marshall Mathers LP at that number. While not, perhaps, the taste of most readers here(and who here listens to the Dixie Chicks), it was as culturally significant as anything Kanye’s recorded. And “Stan” and “Kim” are as creepy as anything Radiohead’s recorded. Just a thought.
Cat Power who? Just looked her up.
what is this shit she sucks.
Obviously a list that tries to appeal to everyone and appeals to none.
Commercially? The artist of the decade could be Kanye or Beyonce. Creatively? (Get ready haters) I would have to go with Jack White. The most consistently interesting artist of the decade…..in my house, anyway.
Jack White = Artist of the Decade Hands Down
beyonce sucks. but she HAD ONE OF THE BEST VIDEOS OF ALL TIME.
You’re an idiot. Go listen Yngwie Malmsteen if you’re only interested in overindulgent compositional guitar rock. Tweedy masters the art of total expression through sonic manipulation, Nels is nothing without Wilco.
how about coldplay, john mayer, or lupe fiasco?
I am glad that they put “Home” by the Dixie Chicks on there.. that is easily one of the best country albums ever made.
Noah Lennox is the artist of the decade…. PP, Feels, & MPP have all changed modern music.
I would have thought the strokes, white stripes, eminem, or coldplay would have made this list for sure…..it is Entertainment Weekly after all. Odd but good call on Cat Power. I guess Entertainment Weekly felt they should put at least one album Ryan Seacrest doesn’t beat off to on the list.
That being said, Kanye doesn’t deserve to be called the artist of the decade. You can not be the self-proclaimed voice of your generation.
dude, you must not know Kanye very well…
[error] that was intended as a reply to this:
“I can [guarantee] if you ask Kanye West (not that he hasn’t been important) who the most important artist of the decade was he will answer Radiohead.
Posted by: T U C K E R at 12/04/09 4:28 PM ”
Kanye definitely votes for Kanye. I definitely vote for boycotting assholes with money.
Kanye has said in his blog before that he believes Radiohead are superior to all artists and he listens to them all the time. He even sampled “The Eraser” for my personal favorite “Us Placers” by CRS.
your point? no one can admit that they would vote for themself…even IIIIII would vote for myself. i mean, really?
I always thought Kim Possible had good taste in music!
Uh…LyK3 DuHHHHZZzzzzzzzz KIM POSSIBLE’S LIST IS BETTER THAN YOURS!
Kim Possible Soundtrack:
1. Call Me, Beep Me! (The Kim Possible Song) – Christina Milian
4. Get up on Ya Feet – Aaron Carter
5. Say the Word – Christy Carlson Romano
7. Could It Be – Christy Carlson Romano
10. The Naked Mole Rap- Ron Stoppable/Rufus
11. Come On, Come On-Smash Mouth
Doesn’t get better than that. Hahahahahahahaha
Miley Cyrus isn’t on this list?
But…she was number one on iTunes!? Doesn’t that mean something!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. JK.
The Dixie Chicks fucking suck.
And I don’t even like most of the Top-Selling/Radio-Rapist shiiiit but
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE is a badass. He rocks.
As for arguing over lists…it’s their list. They own the rights to that magazine. Make your own damn magazine if you want to make a list that isn’t for the sake of ENTERTAINING US–YES—WE MUST BE US—. STFU let’s end this post please.
When did the 1980s end? And the 1990s? (and so forth)
Therefore, the 2000s end in 2009. :) No mistake.
Kanye was good. Is good. His first album was amazing.. but has gone downhill every album since. Where Outkast gets better with each release.. changing what they sound like and what they can do.. Kanye tried too.. some worked. But 90′s hip hop is Outkast. They just stopped making music and in no way fell off. If they released an album tomorrow it would be #1 on the Billboards and…and everyone’s favorite.. but for Stereogum … Veckatimest > MPP .. actually fuck it.. Wild Beast = Girls = best of year.. but who cares
I respect kanye as a person and a musician but what I do not respect is the ignorant public which does not understand the underlying themes he represents. He is the artist of the decade. And a strong voice of this generation; a most apt social statement and beautiful in all his flaws.
Christ. Kanye? Are you shitting me?
What a safe and completely uninspiring list.
Remember when black people were keen on recording music with actual melodies? I don’t. I had to discover it after I was born. Sam Cooke anybody? Arthur Lee? Hell, I’d even take Michael Jackson and I was never a fan.
I’m disappointed in humanity.
i’m glad to see that you are free is getting some love. it’s an amazing album. otherwise, i don’t really get this list much.
If they’re only going to do 10, it should be the best album of each year, and I only see one or two that qualify. And I do actually like the Dixie Chicks, and I liked Home, but to give it precedence as the token “country” recording over the final Johnny Cash American Recordings (Hello? Hurt?) or one of this decade’s T-Bone Burnett productions (e.g., O Brother Where Art Thou OST) is just plain nuts. And on an tangential note, what is the fascination with Johnny Depp? Yes, he’s good, and he’s been prolific, but I can think of so many other actors (male and female) who better qualify for the cover. I think I’ll have to go to EW and make some comments there.
Dixie Chicks? Beyonce? JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE? This is the worst list I’ve seen yet. Even worse, I expected it to be this bad.
So this argument is about Radiohead OR Kanye West???
This list and any other list of musicians of the century disqualify themselves by mentioning nothing but English (language, obviously, not country) music. There is so much more, really.
I mean a list like that can’t possibly be everybody’s taste but how can it pretend to be universal when there is only a single language represented?! The same goes for the RS list. Wow, labout one Spanish album and one of a french band that sing English. Seriously?
are you serious? The only things i agree with are Kid A and Love and theft.
Wheres Elephant?
Wheres Is This It?
Wheres Smile?
there is so much wrong with this list…. ew sucks so bad.
Kanye is completely overrated. There is nothing vaguely original about his material, and he definitely does NOT deserve to be on top of this list. He is a genius only in his mind, and the mind of a few other people that know little about music.
I wish i had read first it was EW doing the list because i could have braced myself for such a stupid dumbass “let’s put craptastic shit like Kanye West and Justin Timberlake on our list to look edgy” horse crap. wow.
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